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Re: Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status?

Well, certainly no as to religious organizations (it would be a back door way to oppress their 1st Amendment freedoms) and charities and civic organizations. If you want to remove the tax exempt status for political stuff and the NFL, that is fine with me.

Re: Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status?

Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status? Should we consider completely eliminating the "non-profit" tax status? Charities, churches, everybody, no exceptions.

Yes, it no longer serves a purpose other than a tax dodge.

Some, as some work is still good and other work shouldn't qualify.

No, there's too much worthy work being done and it should be encouraged.

Other (please elaborate)

I don't think anybody should be special. A church is a business just like any other, as the local ones have full time staff, and the CEO even has a big shiny golden palace. Everyone should pay taxes equally or nobody should.

Re: Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status?

This is a tricky one. I am going to have to say, no. At least as far as complete elimination. If you take away that status from Churches and other religious organizations than you are actually going to allow for the Church and State to join hands. Meaning, you'll create a political organization of the Catholic Church which makes up roughly 25% of this country, do you really want that? That's just one example.

Another, is why should charitable NPO's pay tax? Aren't they, they being you know, charities, taking on a burden which is better left out of the government's hands? Providing welfare and assistance? Now, I understand that CEO's of these organizations can rake in a pretty hefty buck but they aren't exempt from paying income tax on those salaries. So I do agree that the justification for those salaries does lie in the competitiveness of the market. If the "best and brightest" (and I am being a tinge sarcastic here) have no monetary incentive to use their powers for good instead of evil than they will always choose evil. At least until their bank accounts are swollen to the point where money is irrelevant.

Also, let's look at the NPO business model. Let's use Mozilla's Firefox as an example. It's an NPO, but what is it really? A facilitator of business. As a company it reaps no profit in the traditional sense but what it does do is provide an active and engaged forum for other businesses to thrive. Is using its own resources and expanding on those to facilitate others to build new businesses a spoke in the wheel of wealth creation? Something the government could, or rather I say should never do? I believe so.

Keeping NPO's tax exempt just for the reasons I described above should be more than enough justification for their existence and every pro-free market/ limited government individual (this means you libertarians and conservatives) should want to not only allow them to keep their status but encourage more organizations to seek it.

Re: Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status?

This is a fine poll, but if you think this has anything to do with the current issue before Washington, you are mistaken. The issue at hand had little to do with "non-profit or not for profit" status.

The groups in question were not seeking 501(c)(4) status to be "non-profit", they were seeking it, in contrast to a 527 group (which is a tax exempt political group), so they could raise unlimited money from anonymous donors and lobby to their hearts content. I think the pertinent question would be should 501(c)(4)'s be reigned in (open donor lists, no lobbying, limit contributions or no political activity).

Re: Should we rethink the "non-profit" tax status?

Originally Posted by Fisher

Well, certainly no as to religious organizations (it would be a back door way to oppress their 1st Amendment freedoms) and charities and civic organizations. If you want to remove the tax exempt status for political stuff and the NFL, that is fine with me.

What first amendment freedoms? The purpose was to separate church and state, to keep the state from interfering with the church and to keep the church from interfering with the state. However, tons of churches openly advocate political positions, thus violating their tax-exempt status. Those people need to lose their status immediately.

There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.